You sir have a Definition of good glass than I do. The SWFA is a good scope, its hard to package that durability with tracking, and adjustment like that in a 300 dollar package, but the glass is far from "not bad at all". I still think its a good buy, but lets call a spade a spade, the glass kind of sucks.

I used a SWFA SS 20x42 (MOA turrets) for a short while in a ballistics experiment. When I first inspected the scope I noticed the glare was pretty high. It turned out that the glare was too high during normal daylight conditions to give a high contrast image. While the resolution wasn't bad, the image appeared as though I was looking through fog. Another LRH member reported similar issues with his SS 16x42.

The SS 20x42 contrast was so low that I had to replace the scope. I didn't think that I needed Swarovski-quality contrast for this experiment and wanted to keep the cost low. I went with a Burris MTAC 4.5-14X42. The contrast at 14X was quite good - a huge improvement over the SS 20x42.

Based on my experience, I would not buy another fixed mag SWFA SS scope. The image contrast is adequate to see high contrast objects like paper targets under favorable lighting conditions. However, the contrast is already marginal to begin with and will get even worse under adverse lighting conditions.